Broadband
Mukesh Ambani to invest Rs 250,000 crore for ‘Digital India’
MUMBAI: The country’s telecom giants have committed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ambitious plan to connect 2.5 lakh villages across India by 2019 at the launch of ‘Digital India Week’ in New Delhi.
Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani began his address stating how, for the first time, the government, which usually lags behind industries, has taken a step ahead of them by conceiving ‘Digital India’. “Historically, the industry has moved faster than government in India, but with the ‘Digital India’ scheme, the government has overtaken the industry,” he said.
“The youth today aspires for merit based opportunities and progress which ‘Digital India’ will ensure them and we at Reliance Industries commit to achieving that goal with an investment of Rs 250,000 crore,” Ambani announced.
Addressing the infrastructure aspect, Ambani revealed his plans to create an all IP next generation wireless broadband infrastructure across all 29 states in India. Secondly, Reliance Jio will set up a nationwide distribution network that will enable 150,000 small electronic retailers to sell and service smartphones and internet devices.
Not just that, Reliance Jio is in talks with leading device manufacturers to invite them to make smartphones and internet devices at an affordable rate in India. “We will give them assured off-take from our retail system,” said Ambani, who stressed that his company is committed to make necessary investment and strongly partner with central and state government on e-governance, and other services that ‘Digital India’ will provide.
Though Mukesh Ambani set quite high standards for investors in their contribution to ‘Digital India,’ others who followed him didn’t fail to make their promises worth looking forward to.
Take his brother Anil Ambani for example. While most of the business leaders focused on manufacturing and infrastructure to penetrate in the remote areas, Anil Ambani addressed an important aspect of ‘Digital India’: a paper-free India powered by a gigantic database.
“A crucial prerequisite to Digital India’s success is the availability of unlimited cloud computing power, whose building block is a digital database of the mission,” pointed out Anil Ambani.
Reliance Group is the largest provider of data center facility, with its 11 data center connected by India’s largest terrestrial fiber network and world’s largest submarine cable structure, which Anil Ambani plans to double to 1.2 million sq ft in two years.
The Reliance Group chairman also announced a first of its kind initiative — five fully operational cloud exchange points. “Each of these will give government departments 240 times the computing power currently available to their data centers and their efficiency will scale up 100 per cent in every 90 days, as ‘Digital India’ will gather momentum,” he said, followed by an investment promise of Rs10,000 crore to the project.
Bharati Airtel too assured a ‘meaningful contribution’. Bharati Enterprises chairman Sunil Bharati Mittal said, “We at Airtel are fully committed to stand by the government’s revolutionary initiative in the digital space. We plan to invest in excess of Rs 100, 000 crore or USD 16 billion in infrastructure in rural and urban regions alike. We also plan to make 4G available to the masses.”
Mittal hailed Modi as a ‘digitally native man’ and the right person to lead India in this digital revolution. He also mentioned about Bharati Enterprises’ active involvement in promoting eHealth in villages and also collaborate with manufacturers to start making devices and services within India.
Broadband
Tejas Networks names Arnob Roy as MD and CEO, overhauls top leadership team
The Bengaluru-based telecom gear maker reshuffles its entire top team even as quarterly revenue collapses by 83 per cent
BENGALURU: Tejas Networks is changing the guard at the top, and doing so at speed. The Bengaluru-headquartered telecom equipment maker has elevated Arnob Roy as managing director and chief executive officer, effective April 15, 2026, for a term running through to August 3, 2028, and in the same breath announced new appointments across operations and finance. The timing is pointed: the company is navigating one of the roughest patches in its recent history.
Roy steps up from his role as executive director and chief operating officer, a position he has held since March 2019. He brings more than three decades of experience in the high-technology sector across research and development, operations, and sales. His predecessor, Anand Athreya, resigned last year citing personal reasons and was relieved on June 20, 2025, leaving a gap at the top that has now been formally filled.
The numbers Roy inherits are sobering. Tejas posted a net loss of Rs 211.3 crore in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2026, a near-194 per cent widening year on year from Rs 71.8 crore in the same period a year earlier. Revenue for the quarter collapsed 82.6 per cent year on year to Rs 333 crore, down from Rs 1,907 crore. EBITDA swung to a loss of Rs 118.2 crore against a profit of Rs 121.5 crore a year ago. The culprit is not hard to identify: Tejas has derived the bulk of its revenue from BSNL’s fourth-generation network project, delivered as part of a Tata Consultancy Services-driven consortium, and that roll-out is now winding down.
Roy, speaking during a post-earnings conference call with analysts, was candid about where the company has been. “The BSNL 4G network went live across 100,000 sites. We deployed our largest indigenous router networks in the country through the BSNL MAN network, as well as in the BharatNet Phase 3 network,” he said, adding that Tejas had also successfully rolled out its 400G and 800G DWDM equipment in domestic and international markets, and continued the deployment of what it describes as the world’s largest satellite IoT network through its vehicle tracking system solution.
The pivot to new revenue streams is already under way. Tejas has partnered with Japan’s Rakuten Symphony and NEC Corporation to push deeper into international markets, with several Open Radio Access Network trials ongoing, one of which concluded recently. The company is also diversifying across equipment categories and geographies to sustain momentum as the BSNL chapter closes.
To prosecute that strategy, Roy needs a full team around him. Preetham Uthaiah has been appointed chief operating officer, moving up from his current role as vice president of product management for wireless products at Tejas Networks. Uthaiah brings nearly 30 years of global experience spanning engineering, product management, and business development across India and the United States. Before joining Tejas Networks, he served as executive vice president of product management, marketing, and strategy at Saankhya Labs, and held senior roles at Tech Mahindra on both sides of the Atlantic. He holds an MBA from Arizona State University and a degree in electronics and communications from Karnatak University.
On the finance front, AVS Prasad has been approved as chief financial officer, effective May 16, 2026, succeeding Sumit Dhingra, who has resigned. Prasad, currently serving as finance controller at Tejas Networks, brings over 27 years of experience within the Tata Group across telecom, aerostructures, and defence. A company secretary and cost and management accountant by training, he has spent more than 15 years in senior finance roles including CFO and financial controller positions, with expertise spanning corporate finance, treasury management, regulatory compliance, internal audit, and governance.
New chief executive, new chief operating officer, new chief financial officer — all installed in a single move, at a moment when the company’s largest revenue source is drying up and the next chapter remains unwritten. Tejas Networks has placed its bets. Now it has to deliver.
